Significantly delayed and disrupted data transmissions are common within many environments such as those involving space, unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned submarine vehicles and the like. In these environments, data being transmitted from a data source to a destination is further delayed when prior external communications (e.g., an exchange of cryptography keys) are required before successful transmission of the data.
Currently, two common techniques are utilized for cryptography key distribution. In one technique, a source queries a third-party device or a destination for the destinations key; and in another technique, the third-party device pushes keys for all authorized destinations to all of the senders. While the latter technique requires less interaction than the former, both techniques require at least one communication before the source can securely transmit data to the destination. As previously indicated, these techniques are not ideal for use in environments having significantly delayed and disrupted data transmissions. Moreover, the latter technique is not useful in opportunistic or ad-hoc networks in which access to data transmissions is highly intermittent.
Therefore, it may be desirable to have a system and method that take into account at least some of the issues discussed above, as well as possibly other issues.